Words / persistence

Listen: Sticks and stones – guns and bombs – may break our bones, but words have far wider powers to pierce, to hurt, to devastate ... or to charm. Every word is an expression. Destructive. Constructive. Persuasive. Dissuasive.

troubled by speech, the only remedy is speech. --Dennis Formento

Listen: Words heal. Our stories are anchors that teach us to remember, to endure, to act courageously, to look adversity in the eye and maintain our faith that justice must and can prevail. To embrace hope. To aspire. To be persistent in a world that longs to forget, that turns away in denial.

Palestinians, Native Americans, and the Irish have experienced and shared sorrows and joys through centuries. Their narratives meet again and again across the circular boundaries of time, space, and culture. In these narratives we can discover our own stories, as well as the stories of others.

There is growing urgency worldwide to understand who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, where we are going. The knowledge of history and the contexts in which it took place provide strategies for change. So does an understanding of time.

The artists in “The Map is Not the Territory” live close to the surfaces of their personal histories. They bravely confront vestiges of the past and reshape them in unexpected ways. Their images are details of a larger picture that stands for all who have suffered everywhere … and will one day triumph.